Wed, 03/29/2017 - 10:09 am
After sharing details on their new album Home Counties last week, Saint Etienne have announced their first US tour in five years. The two New York dates are on sale now with the other dates on sale Friday at 10AM EST.
 
The Home Counties are an embarrassing place to come from. The name itself suggests that somehow the rest of Britain isn't 'home', not even London. It's where John Major's vision of cricket and warm beer was meant to exist, but it's not really like that at all, and it never has been. The Home Counties are a land of bootleg DVDs at car boot sales, Waitrose bags for life, parking disputes, bored teenagers in semis inventing ghost stories, squaddies causing trouble at all-you-can-eat buffets, train drivers in eyeliner and suburban rebels, a place where Tony Hancock and Spike Milligan drew inspiration.
 
Saint Etienne grew up in the Home Counties. Here are sixteen new songs they have written about a day in the life of this doughnut of shires that ring the capital, punctuated by bursts of BBC radio to remind you what time it is, and all connected by train journeys - main lines, branch lines, commutes, escapes.
 
It begins with SOMETHING NEW, and a teenage girl creeping through the front door after staying out all night. It stops at WHYTELEAFE, and imagines what might have happened if David Bowie had remained David Jones of Bromley, stuck with a desk job. It summons up the Enfield Poltergeist on HEATHER, and the anarchy of Essex's Plotland settlers on SWEET ARCADIA. TRAIN DRIVERS IN EYELINER wonders what the railway network might be like if it was organised according to ASLEF's taste in music.
 
The love/hate relationship people have with 'home' is particularly acute in the Home Counties. Yet Saint Etienne understand that, if you squint, it could be almost utopian - here are the post-war new towns, much of the country's modernist architecture, and the non-league football heroes of Sutton United, Leatherhead, Harlow Town. Three of the Beatles lived here. So did the Prodigy, the Zombies, Depeche Mode, Dr Feelgood and, naturally, Saint Etienne, small town groups looking to the capital but audibly inspired by municipal housing, box hedges and ring roads.
 
The album was produced by Shawn Lee of Young Gun Silver Fox, with support from Augustus (Kero Kero Bonito), Carwyn Ellis (Colorama, Edwyn Collins), Robin Bennett (The Dreaming Spires), Richard X (Girls On Top / Black Melody) and long-time collaborator Gerard Johnson (Denim, Yes). It was recorded in central London. Sarah, Bob and Pete commuted to the studio every day for six weeks.

 

US Tour Dates
Sep 24 – Boston, MA – Somerville Once Ballroom
Sep 25 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
Sep 26 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sep 27 – Washington, DC – U Street Music Hall
Sep 29 – Chicago, IL – Park West
Oct 2 – Seattle, WA – Neptune
Oct 4 – San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore
Oct 5 – Pomona, CA – Glass House
Oct 6 – Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda Theatre

 

 
Fri, 10/07/2022 - 2:53 pm

Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith have announced news of a special deluxe box set release of The Perfect Vision, the triptych of acclaimed albums that encompasses The Peyote Dance, Mummer Love and Peradam. The box set, which includes a remix album featuring contributions from Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Brian Eno, Jim Jarmusch, Laraaji and more, will be released November 25th via Bella Union and is available to preorder here. To celebrate the announcement, Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith have shared Jim Jarmusch’s striking reimagining of “Eternity”. Listen HERE

Between 2019 and 2021, Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith collaborated on the creation of The Perfect Vision: a triptych of albums which took their inspiration from the writings of three emblematic French poets: Antonin Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud and René Daumal. Central to the work was the poets’ necessity to travel to different lands to acquire a new vision and perspective on themselves and their art. Recorded in the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico (The Peyote Dance), the Abyssinian valley of Ethiopia (Mummer Love), and the Himalayan Summit of India (Peradam) respectively, each album retraces the poets’ footsteps, channeled through on-location recorded soundscapes, in search of hidden, earthy sounds that hold embedded existence, with Patti Smith revisiting the poets’ words that have been inspired by the landscapes. The result is a sound and visual montage that traverses the works of Rimbaud, Artaud and Daumal in their voyage to elsewhere.

 1. Peradam (Brian Eno remix)

2. Song Of The Highest Tower (Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith rework)

3. Ivry (Laraaji rework)

4. Bad Blood (Lotic rework)

5. Indian Culture (Lucrecia Dalt remix)

7. Song Of The Highest Tower (AtomTM remix)

7. Eternity (Jim Jarmusch rework)

Mon, 11/21/2022 - 1:52 pm

Today, Dave Okumu & The 7 Generations announce new album I Came From Love. The album will be released April 14, 2023 via Transgressive Records.

I Came From Love is a tapestry of the Black experience that explores ancestry, the legacy of slavery, what it means to exist in an unjust society, and Okumu’s own family history.

On Okumu’s brand new project I Came From Love, he calls on a star-studded array of guests, including Eska, Kwabs, Wesley Joseph, Robert Stillman, Anthony Joseph, Byron Wallen, Raven Bush, and Grace Jones. Rather than release solely under his name, Okumu has chosen the moniker ‘Dave Okumu & the 7 Generations’, which Okumu sees as “my actual ancestors, the ancestors of others, my musical ancestors, and my descendants”.

The album is a body of work presented in chapters; “You Survived So I Might Live” [tracks 1-4], “The Intolerable Suffering Of (The) Other” [5-8], “Seduced By Babylon” (9-11), and “Cave Of Origins” (12-14).

On the album Dave explains, “The narrative of this record emerged in tandem with the origin of its musical journey, through a rumination on survival, ancestry and heritage. The account of the young west African girl who was transported to South Carolina in 1756 and sold to the slave owner Elias Ball and the subsequent unearthing and presentation of her story to her descendants became an emblematic framework for these songs, opening doors to many aspects of the diasporic experience. The music stands in loving defiance of any forces that would seek to disconnect us from our collective history. As I consciously stand before my ancestors through the medium of this sound world, I proclaim that ‘You survived so I might live’”.

The first single to be heard is “Blood Ah Go Run” which tackles the horror of the New Cross house fire in 1981 that killed 13 Black teenagers in South London. The lyrics reflect the Black community’s feelings of the time, crying out, “Blood ah go run / if no justice no come.”

On the track Dave adds, “Living in an area as culturally rich and diverse as southeast London, I feel touched by an atmosphere of transcendence forged through a particular type of adversity. When you walk the streets and so many cultures are represented within a community, it’s difficult not to ask the questions ‘how did these people get here and what have their ancestors passed through so that I can have the life I am experiencing now?’ The story of the New Cross Fire and the subsequent response from different factions of society is one such trial, embodying a process which came to shape a significant element of the discourse around race relations in this country. Living in this part of London, I want to remember and honor those who lost their lives in that fire as their sacrifice, along with many others, feeds directly into my experience of this world.”

Each chapter will be accompanied by a short film directed by Nicolas Premier, who worked across all the visuals on the project. The first film is “You Survived So I Might Live”.

Nicolas explains, “From the first time I listened to 7 Generations I've been stunned by its cinematographic potential and aesthetic. Also, the way Dave's music encompasses a great diversity of sound sources is profoundly inspiring. It's something we talked about from the start of our collaboration and I knew 7 generations would be one of those where things are said before being formulated because we speak the same language. I consider making films is about composing poetry with images and sounds and music often plays the role of the trigger as it did for You Survived So I Might Live.”

Listen to “Blood Ah Go Run” HERE

Watch “You Survived So I Might Live” HERE

Many musicians find creative freedom working alone in the seclusion of their room, but for Mercury nominated singer-songwriter and producer Dave Okumu, the most fruitful moments in his career have occurred in crowded rooms. “In my teens I was already on this journey where I was reflecting on the significance of relationships,” Okumu explains. “I want to learn how to connect with people and how to communicate because this is what life is about.”

Okumu is the youngest child of eight siblings, born in Vienna, Austria, to Kenyan parents. The family later moved to London when he was 10. Growing up in a musical household, Okumu recalls being introduced to 80s funk and soul by his older sisters and being taught how to play guitar by his brother.

His career took off in the mid noughties’ with the Mercury nominated art rock trio The Invisible. Beyond the band, Okumu also developed a reputation as a producer, session player, and musical mentor with the encyclopedic knowledge and calming attitude to coax the best out of a cavalcade of artists including, Tony Allen, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Jessie Ware, and his hero Grace Jones.

Okumu released his first solo record Knopperz in 2021; an instrumental concept album based on pianist Duval Timothy’s 2017 album Sen Am. It was friend and mentor Lexxx who sparked the soul searching that kicked off his next record after he told Okumu that he was trying to explain who Okumu was but struggled to summarize his vast catalogue.

“There are all these ways into these aspects of who I am and I felt like he was saying, it would be so cool if you could find out how to say who you are in a comprehensive way”. Okumu took on that challenge and in response devised his sophomore release I Came From Love. The album writing and demoing process began in January 2021 at Lexxx’s East Sussex studio The Barn, while early recordings were completed at Okumu’s studio with Tom Skinner on drums, and Nick Ramm on keys, and Aviram Barath on synths.

Okumu was certain he didn’t want to make a standard producer record full of features, but he also did not want to be tied down working with a set band. To aid his vision, Okumu decided he wanted his backing band to change with each record. The musicians featured on I Came From Love were also asked to adopt an alter ego to help them express themselves and their ancestry, and access parts of their personality that they might not otherwise bring out.

“I hope that listeners will feel like they're part of the 7 Generations and when I perform on stage that every member of the band is part of the 7 Generations,” he adds, “That's really what the idea is about and that's why it's not just Dave Okumu. It stands for more than that.”

1. Things (ft. Grace Jones)

2. 7 Generations

3. Blood Ah Go Run

4. Streets

5. My Negritude

6. The Cost

7. Prison

8. Black Firework

9. Scenes

10. Amnesia

11. Get Out

12. Struggle

13. Eyes On Me

14. Abaka

15. Paradise (ft. Grace Jones)